.W5j 



|f43. 



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AN 



k\ address 



DEUVERED 15EF0RE THE 



ALU5INI OF HARVARD COLLEGE, 



JITT.Y IG, 1863. 



By JAMES WALKER, D. D. 




CAMBRIDGE: 
SEVER AND FRANCIS 

18 6 3. 



AN 



A D D K E S S 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



ALUMNI OF HARVARD COLLEGE, 



JULY 16, 1863. 



By JAMES WALKER, D. D. 




CAMBRIDGE: 
SEVER AND FRANCIS 

1863. 






^'>v 




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by 

SEVER AND FRANCIS, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts. 



NEW YORk PUBL. LIBR. 
XN EXCHANGE. 



Uni VERSiTT Press : 

Welch, Bigelow, and Company, 

Cambridge . 



ADD RE S S. 



Mr. President and Brethren of this Association : — 

I AM called to address you at a time when men's 
minds are anxiously turned on the unsettled state 
of our public affairs. This, however, is neither the 
occasion nor the place for discussing the different 
policies pro^DOsed, or even for urging the common 
grounds of a devoted attachment to the Union and 
loyalty to the government. Still I cannot find it in 
my heart entirely to thrust aside the all-engrossing 
question of the moment, What can we do for our 
country ? 

There are many public duties and sacrifices in- 
cumbent on all good citizens alike, whether educated 
or not. Again, there are others especially incum- 
bent on educated men, in their capacity as educated 
men ; that is to say, in the very capacity in which 
we, as Alumni of Harvard College, are assembled 
here. 

Some may think that the distinction here referred 
to loses most of its significance in a community like 
ours, where all are educated, and where, as it would 
seem to follow, there can be no such thing as an 



educated class^ properly so called. But this comes 
from not reflecting that education, like wealth or 
goodness, or any other human acquisition or gift, is 
relative. The question is not between those who 
know nothing and those who know everything, 
but between those who know less and those who 
know more. Still there are those who may be 
called educated men by way of distinction, just as 
there are those who may be called rich men or 
good men by way of distinction. 

In saying this, I would not be understood to 
make too much of colleges. There was a time 
when colleges and universities could claim some- 
thing like a monopoly of learning ; but it is not 
so now. The only valid defence of such institu- 
tions at the present day is, that they bring together, 
and combine and use under the most favorable cir- 
cumstances, the best means for the highest culture 
of the age. Even in this respect, however, as all 
must see, the improved condition of our preparatory 
and professional schools, together with tHe multi- 
plication of books, and the establishment of scien- 
tific collections and learned societies, has done not 
a little to supply the place of colleges. Why won- 
der, then, that many whose names are among the 
most distinguished in modern letters and modern 
science should be unable to boast of what is called 
a liberal education? All honor to such men. In 
common parlance, a liberal education still means a 
college education, and a college education still 
means a liberal education ; but names are not 



things. What alone is necessary even to high 
scholarship is, that a man should be liberally edu- 
cated in point of fact, — no matter how or M^iere. 

Assuming, then, that we have an educated class, 
whose special function it is to think, to study, to 
know, I return to the question, What has the 
country a right to expect from this class, as a 
class ? 

It is the fashion in some quarters to make light 
of such inquiries, on the ground that the world 
is not governed by great scholars or great men, 
but by great ideas. Great ideas are the only 
reality ; great men do not exist, except by virtue 
of representing them. Now there can be no doubt 
that an important truth glimmers through mystical 
expressions of this sort. I hope I shall not be sus- 
pected of forgetting or undervaluing the power 
of great ideas to raise man above himself, to lift 
up a whole community, to impress a new character 
on an age or race. But can you have great ideas 
without great minds to conceive them, to compre- 
hend them, to impress them on others, — at least, 
in the first instance ? No student of history or of 
human nature will expect great ideas to be gener- 
ated in men acting together in masses ; they always 
spring up in single gifted or insjDired minds. Nor 
is this all. We talk about great ideas, as if they 
would save us ; but let us understand ourselves. 
What we want are, not men whom great ideas have 
mastered, but men who know how to master great 

ideas. We do not want men made heady by ideas 
1* 



6 



which are too much for them ; nor men seized upon 
and run away with by a single idea ; nor yet men 
who take up a most respectable idea, and press it 
into shapes and push it into consequences which 
make sensible and practical persons ashamed of it, 
or afraid of it. 

I admit the presence and power of great ideas ; 
but this makes a class of highly educated men only 
so much the more necessary, to see to it that these 
ideas are true as well as great, and that they are 
rightly understood and rightly applied. There have 
been times when party spirit and party rancor were 
more intense than now, but never when the ques- 
tions at issue were so profound, so radical, so far- 
reaching. And these questions are not reserved, as 
was once the practice, for the schools ; the discus- 
sion is not locked up in a dead language, known 
only to a privileged few ; everybody is expected 
to take part in it. You can hardly open a maga- 
zine or a newspaper which does not bring into 
notice some of these great ideas, some novel and 
startling doctrine which is thought by many to 
strike at the very foundations of religion and gov- 
ernment, and even of human nature itself Alarm- 
ists will tell you that the world is coming to an end. 
What, then, are we to do ? Even the great leaders 
of thought on the progressive side are beginning to 
betray uneasiness at what they have styled a ten- 
dency to intellectual anarchy in modern society. 
But if this is so, what, I ask again, are we to do ? 

The nature of the evil suggests, as it seems to 



me, what must, in general, be the nature of the 
remedy. We want Avhat will take the place, and 
have some at least of the effects, of old-fashioned 
authority. It is a consciousness of this want, more 
or less distinctly apprehended, which gives rise, from 
time to time, to reactionary movements, especially 
in politics and religion, — republicans leaning to 
monarchy, and Protestants going back to Eome. 
But reactionary movements seldom come to any- 
thing, and for an obvious reason. Such is the 
complexity and mutual interdependence of causes 
and effects in social physics, that you cannot go 
back in one without going back in all. If you 
would have the authority of the Middle Ages as a 
reality and not as a sham, you must have the 
Middle Ages entire. The law would seem to be, 
that every new condition of society develops a new 
set of tendencies, and at the same time a new set of 
checks and balances, these new checks and balances 
being the only ones that can be sincerely or effec- 
tively applied. In a moment of panic, all parties 
may concur in a seeming restoration of the old 
securities ; but it will sooner or later appear that 
there is a world of difference between really believ- 
ing and making believe. You cannot reproduce the 
past ; revolutions go not backward. Accordingly, a 
wise conservatism, instead of wasting its energies in 
a vain attempt to revive an obsolete form of author- 
ity, will seek rather to make the most of its modern 
substitute. And if you ask me what the modern 
substitute is, I am at no loss for a reply. It is an 



8 



enlightened public opinion, sustained by the great 
body of educated men, and directed and enforced by 
the highest intelligence in the community. 

And let no one feel or affect concern lest author- 
ity under this new form will have the same effect in 
arresting or obstructing human progress as authority 
under its old form. What made the latter so objec- 
tionable in this regard was, its being not merely 
authority, but authority without liberty, authority 
without liberty to alter itself, — a fixed and dead 
authority. Of course, under such a state of things, 
there could be no progress either with the educated 
or the uneducated ; but the moment the leading minds 
were set free, progress began, and began with them. 
Authority, however, meaning thereby personal influ- 
ence founded on superior attainments, did not cease; 
it simply became a free, living, progressive, self-as- 
serting authority. The leading minds in every de- 
partment of inquiry were still looked up to as being 
in advance of the rest, because they we?'e in advance 
of the rest ; and it is mainly through such minds, 
and the influence they have exerted, individually 
and collectively, that human progress has been so 
wonderfully accelerated in modern times. " True," 
some will say, " but this is the work of a new prin- 
ciple ; it is the work of teaching, of education." Be 
it so. What, however, is teaching or education, un- 
derstood in this large sense, but the power which 
those who know more exert over those who know 
less ? And what, again, is this power, but authority, 
or, at any rate, its modern substitute ? 



Still I do not shut my eyes on ca real difficulty 
that comes up in this connection. Error may be 
taught as well as truth, and not only error, but per- 
nicious error ; and in looking to educated men, as a 
body, to save us from this evil, I must not forget that 
educated men are, and always have been, the prin- 
cipal offenders. For proof of this, we need not go 
back, as is usual, to the Greek sophists, nor even to 
the French philosophers of the last century : it is so 
now and here. What scientific or theoretical vagary 
can be named, what political extravagance, what 
license or folly in social life, which did not originate 
in the scheming brain of some real or would-be 
scholar ? What attack is ever made on law, which 
is not headed by some recreant lawyer ? or on medi- 
cine, which is not headed by some recreant physi- 
cian ? or on religion, which is not headed by some 
recreant religious teacher ? Eeputations are also 
made, and, I may add, easily made, in this way. I 
remember being once consulted by a young man 
about the choice of a profession, and, becoming a 
little impatient of a manifest craving for effect out 
of all proportion to his abilities, I was tempted to 
say : " Well, if you will be a great man at all events, 
I would advise you to commit some outrageous act ; 
or if you are not quite prepared for that, I would 
advise you to begin by vilifying the Constitution of 
the United States, or, what perhaps would be better 
still, attack Christianity." 

I am sorry to be obliged to make these conces- 
sions ; but, after all, how far do they go ? At the 



10 



worst, only to this, that the educated class, as a class, 
contains the common proportion of ambitious, selfish, 
and unprincipled men. Knowledge is not virtue, 
but power ; why wonder, then, that it should some- 
times be perverted and abused, like every other 
]oower ? Often, however, it is not necessary to sup- 
pose deliberate and purposed wrong ; it may be a 
strong constitutional propensity, — something in the 
blood, in the bones. Macaulay says of Howe, a fac- 
tious member of the British Parliament, that he 
"was what is vulgarly called a disinterested man ; 
that is to say, he valued money less than the pleas- 
ure of venting his spleen, and of making a sensation." 
Such men are found everywhere, at least in all free 
communities, — men who are cursed with a passion 
to be forever meddling, forever before the public ; 
with whom, therefore, it is as natural to be vision- 
aries and disorganizers as to breathe. They may be 
educated, or not : when educated, however, nobody 
would think to account for their conduct by saying, 
it was because of their education ; it would be much 
more reasonable to say, it was in spite of it. 

The only cases of much difficulty are those in 
which a considerable proportion of the educated men 
of a country, through their tendencies and sympa- 
thies as educated men, are sometimes betrayed into 
unnatural alliances and extreme measures, as in the 
first French Revolution. Even, however, in that 
memorable instance, we must not forget how much 
was due to the crimes and follies of the governing 
powers in church and state, and to the distemper of 



11 



the times. Above all, we must distinguish between 
the movement itself and the excesses to which it led. 
As the Reign of Terror drew near, the educated rev- 
olutionists, with their fine theories and humanities, 
began to feel themselves to be in a false, as well as a 
dangerous position ; and hence the hopeless and im- 
becile manner in which they succumbed before the 
coarse and brutal power they had helped to inaugu- 
rate. What more melancholy or more instructive, 
in this respect, than the fate of the Girondist party, 
and the last days of Condorcet ? 

When, therefore, it is said that educated men are 
at the bottom of most of the extravagances and dis- 
orders and impieties of the day, the statement is to 
be taken, if taken at all, in a very restricted and 
qualified sense. Even when they happen to be edu- 
cated men, they are in a false position ; they do not 
act in their proper character as educated men. So 
far from being the class, they do not even so much 
as represent the class, and therefore the class is not 
responsible for what they do. At the same time, as 
the public really suffers, directly or indirectly, from 
the fact that the offenders in question are under- 
stood to belong to the class, it is, as it seems to me, 
a new reason, and a new obligation, why the whole 
class, as a class, should do what they can to prevent 
or remedy the evil. 

Here, however, another objection is suggested. I 
am expecting educated men to act together as a 
class ; to create and sustain a public opinion, which 
supposes them to act in concert. But how can this 



12 



be ? Educated men, even the best of them, are not 
of one mind ; no, not even on questions generally 
accounted most vital and fundamental. They are 
of all the great schools in philosophy, of all the great 
parties in politics, of all the great sects in religion. 
In one word, educated men, even the best of them, 
differ among themselves quite as much as uneducated 
men, and even more. And so perhaps they do in 
some respects ; but what then ? It follows, indeed, 
that they are not likely to agree in all their doc- 
trines and theories ; that is to say, in all the conclu- 
sions arrived at ; still, nothing hinders their agreeing, 
at least generally and substantially, in the manner 
and spirit in which every inquiry should be con- 
ducted. We are speaking of liberally educated 
men, and of men who are so called, not from the 
amount of information they have acquired, but from 
the fact that their minds have been enlarged and 
liberalized in acquiring it. The information, and the 
opinions founded on it, will probably not be the same 
in any two individuals, but the enlargement and lib- 
erality of mind will be, or at least ought to be, com- 
mon to all. Here, then, we have a common and 
distinguishing property of educated men as a class, 
affording them ample ground for sympathy and co- 
operation in a multitude of ways, and for a multitude 
of objects, notwithstanding their differences. 

Unless all our boasting about the influence of 
stvidy and high culture on the mind and character is 
mere arrogance or mere cant, there must be many 
subjects on which the great body of educated men, 



13 



of whatever sect or party, must feel and think to- 
gether. Again, therefore, I say, it is to a public 
opinion founded on this agreement as far as it goes, 
and everywhere honestly and fearlessly expressed, 
that we are to turn as one of the great regulative 
principles of modern society. 

Nowhere is this regulative principle more needed 
than among a people living under institutions like 
ours, and in times like ours. To the question, then. 
What can we, as educated men, do for our country ? 
I reply, Much every way ; with this to recommend 
it, that what we do will be chiefly felt, not in prac- 
tical life, where the nation is the strongest, but 
in intellectual life, where it is unquestionably the 
weakest. 

With respect to the great majority of educated 
men, the danger is from indifference and remissness. 
Dark as the prospect is, I cannot help thinking that 
our public affairs would soon begin to wear a dif- 
ferent aspect, if the wisest and best men among 
us would everywhere awake to their duty, as the 
great moderating and regulating power in a free 
state. In times like these, is it right, is it safe, is 
it manly, for those who ought to exert a controlling 
influence in the community, to look on, carping and 
grumbling at what others do, without even so much 
as attempting to do anything themselves ? Office is 
not essential in any country, and least of all in this 
country, to a wide social and political sway. It is 
given to but few to found empires, to institute laws, 
to discover principles, — to do anything, in short, 

2 



14 



which will materially enlarge the boundaries of 
human thought or activity; but all can contribute 
something to secure or restore a sound and healthy 
state of public opinion. And this is precisely what 
is most needed now and here. The universal spread 
of a modicum of knowledge has effected a change in 
the action of the public mind, which, if it is not 
balanced and regulated by other changes, will lead 
to as much harm as good. The ubiquity of the 
schoolmaster, if it has not turned us all into 7^easou- 
ahle beings, has turned us all into reasoning beings. 
The people demand to know the loliy and the luhere- 
fore of things. All authority, all legislation, all 
instruction for which a satisfactory reason cannot 
be given, and is not given, seems struck with irre- 
mediable impotence. There is no real foundation 
for the complaint sometimes made, that the multi- 
tude, while they refuse to follow good authority, are 
ready enough to follow bad. They are not misled 
by authority, good or bad, in the common accepta- 
tion of that term, but by sophistical reasonings, by 
false or garbled statements, by passionate and one- 
sided declamation, — the whole often resulting in 
a sincere wrong-headedness, which it is the business 
of the better-informed to set right. 

Guidance — cool, wary, far-seeing guidance — 
is the great want and the great duty of the hour. 
When men lived and died in the opinions and prac- 
tices to which they were born, they were obviously 
in no danger of falling into new errors. And not 
only so. Their traditionary opinions and practices 



u 



might be right, or might be wrong ; but, at any 
rate, the institutions of society had become so ad- 
justed to them as to make them consistent with 
order. Widely different are the times on which we 
have fallen. The people are everywhere expecting, 
waiting for, and ready to welcome whatever pur- 
ports to be the latest revelation of truth and duty. 
Under these circumstances, to abandon them to 
shallow or sinister or mad counsels, is to put relig- 
ion, society, law, property, everything at risk. Ac- 
cordingly, it will not do for educated men to go on 
thinking only of themselves and their families, con- 
sulting only their own tastes or their own ease ; 
they must think of the public, and be ready to 
labor for it, and make sacrifices to it. Self-interest 
itself dictates this course. The fate of every one of 
us, th3 uses and pleasures of professional success 
and high social position, all your dreams of happy 
years to come, and the prospects of your children 
after you, are wrapped up in the fate of our cojn- 
mon country. To save our country, therefore, in 
this season of her utmost peril, should be our first 
care. 

And this, as intimated before, must be mainly 
through our agency as the great moderating and 
regulating force of society. I do not forget that 
educated men belong to different parties, and are 
committed to different policies ; but has it come to 
this, that parties and policies are everything, and 
the country nothing ? There are two ways in 
which a thoroughly consistent member of a party 



16 



may hope to serve liis country, — either by the 
influence he exerts on other parties, or by the in- 
fluence he exerts on his own party. Much less 
is to be expected from the former than is gener- 
ally supposed, and for an obvious reason. In civil 
dissensions of long standing, each party gradually 
works itself up to an entire conviction that truth 
and right and humanity are on its side. So confi- 
dent is this assumption, so mtense this feeling, that 
any attempt on the part of opponents to put it 
down by argument, or by ridicule, or by con- 
temptuous insinuations, or by menace, seldom has 
any other effect than to strengthen it, and turn it 
into rage. But it is not so with the influence which 
the example and sober counsels of a man of weight 
and intelligence are likely to have on his own party, 
on those who in most things go with him. 

An English statesman of the last century, speak- 
ing from personal experience, has cold us that " the 
heads of parties are like the heads of snakes, carried 
on by their tails." I do not think this description 
applies very generally to parties in this country: 
sometimes I almost wish it did, for I still have faith 
in the strong practical sense of the masses. With 
us, for the last twenty or thirty years, the principal 
danger has arisen from the fact that the leadership 
of parties has fallen, at least to a considerable extent, 
into the hands of two classes of men, — the mere 
politician, who thinks only of party ascendency, 
and the mere theorist, who thinks only of pushing 
through some pet measure, or some pet system, — a 



ir 

state of things affording abundant oiDportimity and 
temptation for any amount of corrupt bargaining. 
Now, if the great body of educated men could be 
induced to act with sufficient energy and decision, I 
feel sure they would put themselves in opposition to 
this tendency. They would make it their first care, 
each one to make his own party what it ought to 
be ; that is to say, to bring it under the influence of 
its best minds, of the highest and soundest states- 
manship it can boast. Thus, though acting in differ- 
ent parties, they might still be said to act together ; 
for they would act in the same general spirit, and 
for the same general result, — namely, to make all 
parties more loyal and more patriotic. 

And again I say, selfishness itself dictates this 
course. Without going at all into the question whose 
fault it is, or whether anybody is in fault, it is cer- 
tainly to be regretted that the present war has not 
been carried on in a way to unite all parties at the 
North. What is the use of trying to shut our eyes 
on the fact, that a divided people are struggling to 
preserve the life of a great nation ? To expect that 
either party, with all its jealousies and antipathies 
in a flame, will give up its convictions and jDrefer- 
ences to the other, is simply absurd. Unless, there- 
fore, in this extremity, the leading minds in the 
community are willing to work day and night, and 
work together, each one to keep his own party from 
extreme or from factious measures, it seems to me 
that our best hope under God — I will not say our 
last — is gone. 

2* 



18 

Here probably I shall be met by the plea, so 
common of late years in this country, " The people 
do not wish, and will not accept, our services. Even 
our own party will not listen to us." Some, indeed, 
have gone so far as to put this on general grounds, 
making it to be the natural and necessary result of 
democratical institutions. A republic, they say, is 
no place for men of eminence and distinction in 
anything, for men much above or much below the 
common standard : it is the paradise of average men. 
Now in what sense, and how far, is this statement 
true ? Unquestionably, in a republic rightly con- 
ducted, the bulk of the community are more likely 
to be well cared for than under any other form of 
government ; and the reason is, that they take care 
of themselves. But how do they take care of them- 
selves, so far, I mean, as their relations to the state 
are concerned ? Simply by electing able and honest 
men for this purpose. If from any cause they fail 
to do so, no matter whether from the dearth of such 
men, or from perversely choosing inferior men, it is 
certain that the republic will soon cease to be a 
paradise for anybody. The paradise of average 
men ! I am not asking for sagacious and thoroughly 
instructed statesmen, that they may use the people, 
but that the people may use them ; and to suppose 
the people unwilling to use them is to suppose them 
to have lost their senses on one subject, while they 
retain them on all others. Did you ever hear of a 
man, in serious difficulty as to his property or repu- 
tation or life, looking round to find an " average " 



19 



lawyer to help him out of it ? Did you ever hear 
of a parish advertising for an " average " minister, 
or of a great corporation for an " average " actuary 
or superintendent ? Yet this would be wisdom 
itself, compared with committing the vast and com- 
plicated concerns of a great commonwealth to in- 
competent, or even to average hands, to persons 
with no peculiar fitness or training for their special 
task. 

Be this, however, as it may, it does not alter the 
facts in the case. We shall still be pressed with the 
question, " Is it not true that every republic, includ- 
ing our own, has manifested a growing distrust of 
the highest ability in candidates for the highest 
places ? " I suppose we must answer, Yes ; but 
with two important qualifications. In the first 
place, it is not the people, left to themselves, who 
thus desert their great leaders, but the people prac- 
tised upon and cajoled by the politicians. And, in 
the second place, this desertion, however brought 
about, is often more apparent than real. Much of 
what is said about the triumph of availability over 
merit relates exclusively to electioneering tactics, 
and the scramble for office : after all, the people 
know the difference between them, and show it in a 
thousand ways. In office or out of office, a great 
statesman is a great power in the state. 

One word more. Many who* believe in the im- 
portance of a wise and able statesmanship, do not 
readily see what connection statesmanship has with 
scholarship. " We do not want bookish men," ik^j 



1 



20 



will say ; " we do not want dreamers or theorists or 
doctrinaires. We want men of sound, practical 
judgment ; and such men are much more likely 
to be bred up in the active walks of life than in 
colleges." 

It is the old feud between practical men and spec- 
ulative men, — a feud which owes whatever vitality 
it retains to an unwillingness to make the necessary 
discriminations. The order and progress of society 
do not depend on men of action any more than on 
men of thought, nor on men of thought any more 
than on men of action ; they depend equally and 
alike on both. You cannot govern an empire, or 
build a ship, or make a pin, without availing your- 
selves at the same time of the results of study and 
of the results of experience. We want practical 
men, and we want speculative men ; in their respec- 
tive provinces, both are indispensable, the only 
danger being that one will invade the province 
of the other. Let the man of books, let the mere 
student, let the man of speculation, as such, confine 
himself to his legitimate and special province ; and 
this, when stated in a broad and general way, is, as 
I suppose all will agree, the province of ideas. 

So far, all is plain. But the problems we thus 
solve in our closets are seldom, if ever, the problems 
we are called upon to solve in real life. We sep- 
arate things in out reasonings, and treat them as 
entirely distinct, which, however, are almost never 
separated in fact. Where will you find a scholar 
who is nothing but a scholar ? Consider, too, what 



21 



are called the learned professions, including states- 
manship. Each supposes, at the same time and in 
the same person, the knowledge which study gives, 
and the knowledge which practice gives. Thus the 
great theorist becomes the great organizer, the great 
administrator ; yet even in such cases, in his capa- 
city of theorist, he uses one set of faculties, and is 
governed by one set of rules ; and in his capacity of 
organizer and administrator he uses another set of 
faculties, and is governed by another set of rules. 
Accordingly, we may still say, as before, that the 
proper business of the mere scholar is to take care 
of the ideas of the community, and that he has no 
right to intermeddle with its practical relations, or 
with its institutions, until, to his knowledge of 
books, however profound, he has suj^eradded a 
knowledge of affairs. 

What, then, is the conclusion to which we are 
brought ? Not, surely, that we should have dream- 
ers or visionaries or mere theorists to rule over us. 
If there is a practical thing under heaven, it is civil 
government, — to be framed and administered on 
practical principles, — that is to say, with a con- 
stant reference to what is best, not perhaps in it- 
self, but in the circumstances. For this reason, the 
first requisite in persons who are to fill important 
posts is unquestionably a sound, practical judgment, 
trained by experience in actual public service. 
But it does not follow that statesmanship is to 
be classed with the trades or crafts, and not with 
the liberal professions. It is still a liberal profes- 



22 



sion, which supposes the business to be understood 
in its principles as well as in its application, and the 
whole to be based on a broad general culture. No 
doubt single and rare instances have occurred of 
genius or native aptitude for affairs, which seemed 
to dispense with the necessity of previous training. 
Yet, even in such cases, I suspect that one of two 
things usually happens. Either the previous train- 
mg is really acquired, though in peculiar and rapid 
ways, or else the statesmanship itself wants finish 
and completeness, perhaps, indeed, is nothing but 
the vulgar counterfeit, political cunning. 

Whether the general and preliminary culture 
which forms the scholarly element in accomplished 
statesmanship be obtained in colleges, or elsewhere, 
is, as before intimated, immaterial. But I owe it 
to the place and the occasion to insist, that what 
colleges aim to do is precisely what is here re- 
quired. In other words, they use study, not 
merely or mainly as a means of information, but 
to exercise and develop, and strengthen the whole 
mind, and prepare it for the highest work. At any 
rate, there cannot be a greater mistake than to 
suppose that it is the tendency of colleges to make 
dreaming and theorizing politicians. How has it 
been in England ? Her colleges are more faithful 
than any other to scholastic traditions, and it is 
mider such influences that most of her public 
men have been trained. Now I am not going to 
pronounce a eulogy on English statesmen. Very 
likely they are chargeable with a multitude of 



23 



faults and defects ; one thing, however, is plain, 
they are neither visionaries nor pedants. For a 
long period, and amidst great excitements, they 
have shown themselves to be singularly cautious 
and practical. While the rest of Europe has been 
convulsed with revolution after revolution, to very 
little purpose, England alone has steadily held on 
her course, the government becoming more and 
more popular ; not, however, according to any 
theory of abstract right, but as the way was pre- 
pared for it by the existing state of things, or by 
the indications of Providence. In one Avord, they 
have acted on the principle, — not a bad one, as it 
seems to me, — that there is no real and solid 
progress but growth, and no unerring reformer 
but God, 

After all, the best illustration of what I have 
said is found in the history of our own College. 
This institution, as you all know, did not originate 
in love of learning for its own sake, but in concern 
for the commonwealth. In the lano;uao;:e of the 
day, it was " for the better discharge of our trust 
for the next generation, and so to posterity, being 
the first founders do wear away apace, and that 
it grows more and more difficult to fill places of 
most eminence as they are empty or wanting." 
Every new charter proposed, every new applica- 
tion for aid, sets forth the same reason in almost 
the same words ; it is always " that persons of 
known worth may thus, by the blessing of Al- 
mighty God, be educated and better fitted for 



24 



public employments, both in Church and in the 
civil state." 

The pledge implied in such statements, as I 
suppose all will admit, has been, at least in some 
good measure, redeemed. You will meet with but 
few individuals of much note in our colonial history^ 
after the first generation, who were not Alumni of 
Harvard. Some of them, when the difficulties with 
the mother country arose, adhered to the Royalist 
side ; but not so the College itself Long before that 
question began to be agitated. Dr. Colman, who was 
a member of the Corporation, wrote to a friend in 
England, "If I am able to judge, no place of educa- 
tion can boast a more free air than our little College 
may." It was the breathing of this " free air " which 
gave the country such men as James Otis, Samuel 
and John Adams, and Jonathan Mayhew. On this 
j)oint, friends and foes would seem to have been 
of one mind. Thus, Governor Hutchinson com- 
plains that the College threw its whole weight 
and influence, from the beginning, into the popu- 
lar cause. On the other hand, Governor Hancock 
takes occasion to compliment the College as being, 
"in some sense, the parent and nurse of the late 
happy Revolution." Again, John Adams writes to 
one of his correspondents in 1790, " Your Boston 
town-meetings and our Harvard College have set 
the universe in motion." About the same time. 
Lord Cornwallis, who had occasion to know some- 
thing of our affairs, said to a Massachusetts man 
in India, " The early estabUshment of your College 



25 



hastened the American Revolution half a century." 
I do not suppose that expressions like these are 
to be taken to the letter. Nevertheless, they show, 
beyond doubt or cavil, what was the general im- 
pression at the time, — an impression, I may add, 
strikingly justified by the fact, that the five dele- 
gates from this State, whose names are enrolled 
among the immortal signers of the Declaration of 
Independence, were all sons of Harvard. 

Since that time, we have become merged in a 
great nation, and colleges have sprung up every- 
where. Of course, in this altered state of things, 
our own College, though it has grown into the 
character and proportions of a University, has lost 
more or less of the prestige it once had as the place 
of education for public men. Even in this respect, 
however, and looking only to the highest national 
and State ofiices, the statistics furnished by the 
Triennial will show that we have no reason to be 
dissatisfied with the record. I find there the names 
of twenty-one Delegates to the American Congress 
under the Confederation ; of two Presidents and two 
Vice-Presidents of the United States ; of twenty- 
seven Senators and one hundred and ten Represent- 
atives in Congress \ of three Justices of the Federal 
Supreme Court ; of six Cabinet Secretaries, and two 
Attorney-Generals ; of fourteen Ministers or Envoys 
Extraordinary to foreign countries, six of whom 
were to England ; of ten Governors of Massachu- 
setts, and seven of other States. 

Those men, I hardly need say, were of every 

3 



26 



variety of mind and character. Still it is easy to 
see that their influence has been prevailingly in one 
direction, and that it has been a moderating and 
regulating influence. Hence a common objection 
to the College, that it was for liberty before the 
Eevolution, and for law afterwards, — progressive 
in the beginning, conservative in the end. But 
even if this were true to a much greater extent 
than it is, it would not argue either defection or 
inconsistency. A wise man does not give himself 
to liberty exclusively, nor to law exclusively ; he 
gives himself to both, and to that one especially 
which is most in danger at the time. 

Time would fail me to speak of the eminent men 
who have carried into a long life of public service 
the principles and the spirit inculcated here. I 
cannot speak as I would even of him who has so 
many titles to our notice on this occasion, who 
stands alone for his years, and for the veneration 
that is felt for him, — chiefly known to this genera- 
tion as the honored head of the University, but 
long before that, and long, before a large proportion 
of this audience were born, actively and earnestly 
engaged in matters of state, — the scholar, the 
statesman, and the patriot. He has lived to see 
the best and the worst days of the Republic, and 
still lives, — may we not hope, in order that his last 
look may be on his country redeemed and reno- 
vated by the trials through which it is now passing, 
and with every vestige of rebellion and bondage 
swept away ?" 



27 



And let no one dream that public virtue and de- 
votion to country are principles which are dying out 
in this place. We have referred to what the fathers 
did ; let us now see what the children are doing. 
When the Southern insurgents took up arms against 
the freest and best government on earth, and it be- 
came necessary to repel force by force, the recent 
graduates of this College, and some who had" not yet 
graduated, were among the first to obey the call. 
More than four hundred and fifty of our number 
either now are, or have been, in the loyal service, 
— probably as large a quota, after the proper deduc- 
tions are made, as any other considerable class of 
citizens has furnished. It was presumed that their 
education would be of advantage to them, so far as 
intelligence and personal influence were required ; 
but it has been of advantage to them in other ways. 
It has given a substance and body to their characters, 
which only needed the inspiration of a lofty purpose 
in order to become the foundation of the highest 
courage, and even of great powers of physical en- 
durance. They went because they were called. It 
was not military glory, nor political ambition, nor 
schemes of reform, which moved them, but an inflex- 
ible purpose to preserve the integrity of a great na- 
tion, and maintain the supremacy of the laws. How 
they have performed this duty, appears from the 
large and constantly increasing number of those 
who have Mien at their posts. Our necrology for 
the past year reveals the remarkable fact, that one 
half of the deaths have occurred in the public ser- 



28 



vice. It lias been sorrow and desolation to many 
hearts and many homes ; but it will make the name 
of Harvard dear to every patriot in the land. 

Alas that so many young lives, the hope of the 
country, should be cut off in their early promise ! 
But with the longest life, wdiat better, what more, 
could they have done ? Sooner or later a monument 
will be 'erected in the College grounds to commem- 
orate their heroism. Do not cover it over with a 
glorification of our institutions, or of our people, or 
even with a studied eulogy on the dead : thus to 
have offered up their lives is glory enough. Write 
on it these few simple words : " In memory of the 
Sons of Harvard who died for their country." And 
there let it stand, among the good and gracious in- 
fluences of the place, the best and most gracious of 
them all. There let it stand. While your children 
and your children's children are here preparing 
themselves for life, it will teach them that the pur- 
suit of pleasure, the blandishments of society, and 
literary rivalships are poor things, when compared 
with devotion to principle. There let it stand. If 
under the influence of great material prosperity^ or 
in the hard competitions of the world, the public 
heart should again grow cold, and educated men for- 
get their duty, it will still teach the same lesson. In 
all coming time, when the Alumni of this College 
revisit, as we do to-day, the scenes of their early 
studies and friendships, the old feeling will be re- 
vived, and, touched by the inspiration of a noble 
example, they w^ill renew their vows to be faithful 
to their country and the laws. 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



022 138 853 7 M 






LIBRARY OF CONGRESSi 




022 138 853 7 



